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  6. Step 1 Brainstorming a Question
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  9. Step 4 Plan your experiment
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  11. Step 6 Background
  12. Step 7 Analyze Your Data
  13. Step 8 What does it mean?
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Soap Plants

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Table of Contents

An observation made during the experiment was that one plant trial had a mass of 12.14 g, this happened by either the way the plant were cleaned or just that this plant had more roots than the others. One challenge in this experiment was cleaning the soil off the plants roots, without breaking the roots. The plants were eventually cleaned using water, this could have been a problem, because the water that was used to clean the plants could have affected the results by it sticking to the soil that would not come off of the plants roots. The knowledge gained through this experiment can help someone else by showing that soap in water kills the plants more than it helps them. It also can show someone that we need to be more careful in the chemicals we use, because even if we don't intentionally put those chemicals in a garden, or in the air it can kill plants, and more.

Title

What brand of soap in water helps a plant gain the most mass?


Broad Question

How do different soaps effect a plants growth?

Specific Question

What brand of soap in water helps a plant gain the most mass?

Hypothesis

It is hypothesized that plain water will help a plant gain the most mass, but compared to the other soaps Gain will help the plant gain the most mass.
Graph of Hypothesis
alba12-b-hypothesisgraph.png

Variables

Independent Variable:

Brand of Soap

Dependent Variable:

Mass in grams

Variables That Need To Be Controlled:

amount of soap in water
the number of days that the plants were watered.
where the plants were grown
amount of soil in each planting cell
type of plants

Vocabulary List That Needs Explanation


General Plan

Potential Problems And Solutions

Finding a way to rinse the plants, carefully rinse under a faucet, trying not to break the roots.

Safety Or Environmental Concerns

A person or animal drinking the liquid soap.
Getting the soap in someones eyes

Experimental Design

This experiment is being setup to test what brand of soap in water will help a plant gain the most weight. To start the experiment the soap will be mixed into the water. Each brand of soap will be mixed into different containers of water. One container will be left with just water and no soap. Then the seeds will be planted into planting cell trays. Each brand of soap in water will be watering it’s own plants in their own planting cell tray. Depending on how long the seeds need to grow the plants will be watered every day in a week that their is science. When the plants are fully grown (this can be observed by looking at the plants watered with just water) they will be carefully rinsed off and measured using a scale. Each cell in a planting cell tray will count as one trial.

Resources and Budget Table



Item Name
 Quantity
 Size
 Cost
Gain Soap
 1
 9 fl oz
 1.28
Great Value Soap
 1
 24 fl oz
 2.09
Dawn Soap
 1
 14 fl oz
 1.57
Scale
 1
0
Seeds
 1 package
0
Planting Cell Trays
 4
0
Containers
 4
0
Soil
 Enough to fill cells in 4 planting cell trays. (36 cells)
0

Detailed Procedure

1.Get the materials: three different brands of soap, four 3 x 3 cell planting trays, four watering containers, and seeds.
3. Measure out 15 ml of soap for each brand.
4. Mix the three soap brands in different watering containers leaving one extra container for just water (label with the watering containers as they are mixed with soap with the right brand so the experimenter knows which is which)
5. Plant 4-5 radish seeds ½ an inch deep in the soil.
6. Water the plants, 1 planting cell tray for each brand of soap.
7. Everyday there is science the plants will be watered.
8. After about one month measure plants mass. This will be done by carefully taking the plant out of its cell in the planting tray without breaking the roots. The dirt will then be carefully cleaned of the plant, the plant will then be placed on a measuring scale to get the mass, in grams, of the plant.



Data Table

SFPDataImage8AMB_html_m774a0c46.jpg



Data Analysis


Graphs

alba12-b-datagraph.png
Data graph





alba12-b-averagemassgraph.png
Average Mass of Plants Graph


Photos


alba12-b-plantBbeforeusingsoap.jpg
Plant B before watering with soap


alba12-b-plantCbeforeusingsoap.jpg
Plant C before watering with soap

Results

The average mass of the plant watered with dish soap brand name Gain was 0.21 g. For the dish soap brand name Dawn, the average was 0.19 g. The dish soap brand name Great Value had an average of 0.63 g. And the plants watered without soap had an average of 2.77 g. The regular water without soap helped the plants gain the most weight.

Conclusion

The experiment was designed to test what brand of soap in water will help a plant gain the most weight. The results show that the water without soap worked best for helping the plants gain the most weight. The average for watering with plain water was 2.77 g, the average for watering with the dish soap brand name Great Value it was 0.63 g, with the dish soap brand name Gain it was 0.21 g, and with the dish soap brand name Dawn it was 0.19 g.

Discussion

This experiment was setup to test what brand of soap in water would help a plant gain the most mass. The results of the experiment did answer the question. Overall, the water without soap helped the plants the most, but out of the soap the brand name Great Value helped the plants the most. It had been previously hypothesized that the plain water would help a plant gain the most mass, but compared to the other soaps that Gain would help the plants gain the most mass. The results support half of the hypothesis. With plain water the average mass of the plants was 2.77 g. When watering with Great Value the average mass was 0.63 g. When watering with Gain the average mass of the plants was 0.21 g. And when watering with Dawn the average mass was 0.19 g.

Some patterns or trends within the data are that some plants grew greater in each type of watering method, and some grew smaller. The results of the plants watered with soap were so low because the soap in the water killed the plants more than it helped them. A useful material to have had when doing this experiment would have been at least one brand of soap with phosphates in it. There were no soaps with phosphates though, because phosphates was banned in 16 states, one of which being New Hampshire.


An observation made during the experiment was that one plant trial had a mass of 12.14 g, this happened by either the way the plant were cleaned or just that this plant had more roots than the others. One challenge in this experiment was cleaning the soil off the plants roots, without breaking the roots. The plants were eventually cleaned using water, this could have been a problem, because the water that was used to clean the plants could have affected the results by it sticking to the soil that would not come off of the plants roots. The knowledge gained through this experiment can help someone else by showing that soap in water kills the plants more than it helps them. It also can show someone that we need to be more careful in the chemicals we use, because even if we don't intentionally put those chemicals in a garden, or in the air it can kill plants, and more.

Background Research

Soap with Phosphates helps fertilize plants

Soaps with Phosphates, and percent of phosphates in soap:

Palmolive Gel 1.6%

Electra-Sol Gel 3.7%

Wal-Mart Automatic Dishwashing Detergent Gel 4.0%

Pure Power Gel 4.0%

Sunlight Liquid 4.3%

Electra-Sol Powder 4.5%

Sunlight Powder 4.5%

Cascade Liquid 5.0%

Cascade Complete Liquid 5.0%

Pure Power Powder 5.3%

Hannaford Dishwasher Detergent Powder 5.3%

Shaw’s Automatic Powder 6.0%

Wal-Mart Automatic Dishwashing Detergent Powder 6.3%

Cascade Pure Rinse Powder 6.4%

Cascade Action Pac Tablet 8.0%

Electra-Sol Tablets 8.7%

Electra-Sol Gel Pac 8.7%

The soap could kill the leaves of the plant.


16 states are banning phosphates; Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Stores will not be allowed to sell detergent with more than 0.5 percent of phosphates.

References

"Does soap help a plant grow."

The Q&A wiki. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2013.

<http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Does_soap_h>



"Why would soap watered plants grow
faster then regular watered plants ??? -
Yahoo! Answers." Yahoo! Answers -
Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2013.
<http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090329153609AAA7W3f>.


{, LineTag. "16 states ban phosphate-
laden dishwasher soap." USA TODAY:
Latest World and US News -
USATODAY.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2013.
<http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/06/16-states-ban-phosphate-laden-dishwasher-soap/1#.UQq827_AeSo>.

Abstract

This experiment was conducted to test which brand of soap in water would help a plant gain the most mass. It was hypothesized that plain water would help a plant gain the most mass, but of the soaps Gain would help the plant the most. Plants were watered with three different brands of soap in water and plain water. The average data for the dish soap brand Gain was 0.21 g, Dawn was 0.19 g, Great Value was 0.63 g, and plain water was 2.77 g. The data showed that, out of the soaps, Great Value helped the most, but overall no soaps helped.